


aprilis

by ballantine



Series: noble consuls of rome [2]
Category: Ancient History RPF, Rome (TV 2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Graffiti, Lions, M/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:15:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24253474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballantine/pseuds/ballantine
Summary: A tall, shining Brutus stood over the bloodied body of Caesar with a naked sword in hand whilst Antony, dark and a little squashed, loitered about the dead man's feet clutching a dagger. THUS EVER, FOR TYRANTS, proclaimed Graffiti Brutus.“It's not a bad likeness,” said Brutus. “I mean, they got your legs right.”
Relationships: Mark Antony/Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger
Series: noble consuls of rome [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1730350
Comments: 12
Kudos: 41





	aprilis

Dawn rose over the many hills of Rome and bestowed a delicate gossamer light upon the wreaths of oak leaf and acorn that many unknown someones had placed upon the statues of Caesar still standing throughout the city. For those whose mourning was denied public airing, the sight of the wreaths was like an open hand reaching out of the darkness; everyone else was made uneasy.

When a people could not agree over something as fundamental as grief, they knew it boded ill for other matters of civil society.  
  


* * *

  
The large pail was full of ashes, rough and unsifted. It must've been heavy, but loyal Eros had carried it carefully through the city streets as if it contained the remains of his own beloved mother.

Antony lifted a half-burned shred of cloth from its depths and examined it. A familiar pattern could be made out: gold rings on a dark navy, almost black background. He sighed, a little. “I liked this one.”

“Wretched woman,” said Eros tightly.

“Can't really hold it against her. I did kill her uncle.” Antony dropped the fabric and dusted his hands off. He looked around without much hope. “So that was it? There was nothing to salvage?”

“Merula said the sandals and boots wouldn't easily burn, so they gave them away to their hog man.”

He nodded. “So I have, in fact, only the clothes on my back.”

“You needed a new wardrobe anyway,” said Eros. He was the type to try and look for a good side to bad turns. Belonging to one such as Antony, he'd had a lot of practice.

“And when will that be ready?” Antony sank down on a couch. He pulled a face and warned, “I won't resort to borrowing from my host – he wears his tunics too long. Trying to hide those damn chicken legs of his.”

Eros nodded in fervent agreement. Antony had only meant the drape of fabric would interfere with his movement, but the slave was concerned about more important things; Antony's legs were too powerful and nice to look at to be put behind a long skirt. Eros thought it would be bad for public morale.

“Your official toga will be delivered tomorrow. The rest – perhaps early next week.”

Antony stared unseeing into the middle distance. He said, “You know, I might just be the poorest consul in the history of the Republic?”

He sounded more amused than self-pitying, which was what allowed Eros to reply that matters could always be worse.

“Worse?” he said. “What's worse than consul?”

“Why, a slave, Dominus,” said Eros.

Antony looked at him in surprise. After a moment he laughed; he could no sooner imagine being a slave than waking up one day a red-haired Briton.  
  


* * *

  
That April, it was said the streets of Rome were so clogged with couriers and slaves carrying missives between houses that even Mercury would have found it hard to get his messages done in a timely manner. The elections had forestalled further bloodshed, but now everyone was jockeying for advantage and making personal demands.

Optimates expected Brutus to work energetically to restore their powers both real and desired. (“They're finally asking permission to eat their tenants' offspring, are they?” inquired Antony.) While the sizable faction of Populares who'd thrown their support behind Antony were adamant that recent land reforms be sustained. (“Our borders shall have to reach the Caucuses before we have enough land to parcel out to these people,” said Brutus.)

Quintus made loud demands for the restoration of his father's estate. Cassius went on and on about something to do with lions. Everyone was waiting to see what the consuls would do.

“I don't know what to do,” confessed Brutus.

He collapsed onto the couch opposite Antony, who found himself reflecting that he really needed to move out. He should get a place with a gate, where Brutus would have to walk past armed guards if he wanted to come moan to him about politics. He did not think this would stop the man, but it might temper his perspective.

Brutus said, “Lucius Tillius Cimber's been at me again. The man won't stop asking about his brother's exile.”

“Has he?” said Antony vaguely. “He hasn't mentioned it to me.”

“That's because he's terrified of you.” He looked moodily at the ceiling. “I don't understand, I thought he hated his brother. Half the point of that petition was to drive Caesar to distraction at the idea of anyone wanting Publius _back_.”

“Fuck Publius,” agreed Antony.

Brutus twisted onto his side and cast him a dark look. “I don't get the impression you are attending to your consular obligations with the same dedication as I.”

He spread his hands over the table, which was laden with scrolls. “What do you think all this is?”

Brutus reached out and rifled through the papers in a desultory fashion. “Half of them, I suspect, are house listings. You're trying to abandon me. The rest, I don't know – new plays, or letters from old war buddies....” His tone dropped off and Antony remembered, too late, what actually lay below the day's correspondence. He lunged to grab the critical papers, but it was too late.

“Parthia?”

“Give me that—”

But Brutus evaded his grasping hand by rolling off the opposite side of the couch. He landed on his feet and stood, all the while studying the paper in his hand; never had the man moved with such fluidity and grace in all his life.

“ _Parthia._ ” His rising disbelief nearly cracked his voice in two. On his knees beside the abandoned couch, Antony let his head drop into his hands.

“Is this a mocking vision sent to me by the gods?” Brutus wondered. “I'm over here trying to stave off a constitutional crisis and you're planning your next vacation?”

Antony raised his head, deciding abruptly to be over it. “The consulship is for but a year. I was merely looking over maps for the campaign. He had already put forth so many plans, it seemed a pity to let them go to waste.”

But this explanation, if anything, made Brutus's dismay only grow. The sight of it caused Antony's readied words to dry up; it was hard to remember his grief was not alone. Brutus's eyes were shadowed by his own long stretch of sleepless nights.

“Well,” he said, tossing the map down, much subdued, “I'd still prefer that you focus on matters more pressing. The whole country is in a shambles, and we have to somehow pull it together.”

“Yes,” said Antony.

“These fantasies of running East to play soldier, I really don't think that's the answer to your dissatisfaction with life, Antony. Besides,” Brutus said, rallying, “it's perfectly likely that we'll be dead before the year is out.”

Similar odds had been given for every consul since Marius. It was impossible to say whether Brutus meant it to be a comfort or a warning.  
  


* * *

  
The curia echoed with triumphant cheers the day they abolished the office of the Dictatorship. Senators again crowded Brutus, all wanting to express their respect and gratitude while Antony, lounging slightly off to the side, endeavored not to tense up at the tight press of bodies. The adulation went on for an eternity.

“Glad that's done,” Antony said later as they proceeded home. “Now the next time a fellow shows up with thousands of troops under his command, looking to throw his weight around, he'll have to come up with a whole new title for it.”

But Brutus was floating too high to be brought down by these pessimistic words. His brow was smooth, his eyes clear. He liked nothing so much in the world as doing right and for once feeling deserving of others' high esteem.

“Learn to take the win,” Brutus advised.

Antony opened his mouth to let him know what he thought of his _win_ – one good day and suddenly he was Fabius fucking Maximus – but then he caught sight of a freshly painted mural above his favorite pub and the words were stillborn.

“What in dark Hades is this?” he said, stopping. Their bodyguards stopped a second later, and he was distantly bothered by how they crowded him: a fraction of his thoughts always calculating how large a bribe it would take to buy off one man in a critical position, and one man is all it would take when it's a bodyguard, a blade turned inward rather than out....

But the rest of his thoughts were thoroughly preoccupied with the mural, which was a hideous travesty. A tall, shining Brutus stood over the bloodied body of Caesar with a naked sword in hand whilst Antony, dark and a little squashed, loitered about the dead man's feet clutching a dagger. THUS EVER, FOR TYRANTS, proclaimed Graffiti Brutus.

“It's not a bad likeness,” said Brutus. “I mean, they got your legs right.”

He stared up at Graffiti Brutus's limpid amber eyes. “I'll have the owner flayed in the street.”

Brutus wrinkled his nose. “Seems like a bit of an overreaction. Come, Antony,” he said heartily. “You should not care too much of what others think of you. It's not healthy.”

Antony wondered how their bodyguards would react to one of their charges trying to kill the other.  
  


* * *

  
Buoyed by his success with abolishing the Dictatorship, Brutus decided to host a dinner of reconciliation.

“A dinner of what,” said Antony.

“A dinner of reconciliation,” said Brutus placidly. “I want to bring together the remaining Caesarian hold-outs and our detractors from the other side and make a bid for unity.” He sipped his wine. It was his third cup; he always had ideas around the third cup. He might've decided to off his lifelong mentor after a third cup.

Antony poured himself a generous helping and sat opposite him. The cushion was rough on the bare undersides of his thighs; the tunic Eros had found for him that day was too short, even for his tastes. Nevertheless, he planted his feet wide and dared Brutus's gaze to dip.

He said, “In other words, you want to take all the people who likely want to see us dead, or at the very least fail, and put them in a room together.”

Up went the nose. “You sound skeptical, but we must start somewhere. A show of unity is critical to that process.”

“So long as you understand that a _show_ is all it will ever be.”

The maddening facade of nobility at last cracked and some of his natural Junii peevishness leaked out. “Look, I'm trying to make the best of a bad situation. Would you at least try to go along with it? What's the worst that can happen – you get to say _I told you so_?”

Antony stared. “The _worst_ – have you taken a blow to the head when I wasn't looking? The worst that can happen is we end up with our throats slit and our blood blessing the pavers of the forum.”

“But – that's what the bodyguards are for.” Brutus gestured to the empty doorway, as if the mere mention of the guards might summon them from outside the house; it did not.

“If they can be trusted. I'm not so sure.” He drained his cup and pretended not to notice Brutus looking at the line of his throat. To aid this endeavor, he poured more wine. He really needed to move out, he thought again.

“Is this how it's going to be for you, from now on?” Brutus asked quietly.

The muscles around Antony's knees tensed, like he was readying to spring up from his seat. “I don't know what you mean.”

They had never talked about it, not directly. Brutus had come to him for help and Antony agreed to do it. Beneath this simple sequence of events lay a wealth of unspoken promises and beliefs. But as the days continued piling up on the other side of the deed, he started wondering at his own motivations. He'd known what they were at one point, hadn't he?

 _Do you wish you had not done it?_ Brutus had asked him, characteristically misunderstanding Antony's dilemma. Regret was not in his nature, but doubt? He felt the doubt might eat him alive. He killed Caesar and nothing – not the gods nor his own conscience – stopped him. This ever-widening absence in the wake of the Ides could swallow the world if he let it. After all, if he could not rely upon his own judgment, then how did he continue forward?

He said, “I need a man I can trust.”

“That's what I've been trying to say,” said Brutus. “I think this whole business has shaken your faith in yourself and your fellow citizens, which is perfectly understandable, and I do think – I know, I _know_ I am largely responsible, and little else drives my nightly torment, please don't think it doesn't weigh heavily on my spirits—”

“I need to find Lucius Vorenus,” said Antony, thoroughly ignoring him.

Brutus checked his nod. “Wait, who? That angry little Gaul? What could you possibly want with him?”

“He's not Gallic,” he said absently. “He just has unfortunate coloring.” Unfortunate coloring and the most bloody-minded sense of morality he had ever encountered. He might use the man's facial expressions like a haruspex inspecting the entrails of sheep.

“The question stands. He's not even a senator anymore. What use is he?” Impatience crept into his voice as Antony stood and made for the door, and Brutus called after him, “You'll be back for the dinner, right? Antony?”

He went to his rooms and dispatched Eros to the Aventine, to locate the man Vorenus in whatever strange hovel he occupied, and bring him back to stand before his consul. But when Eros returned hours later, he reported there was no Vorenus, and no hovel – only a blackened ashy crater where once a happy family of five and their dependents had lived.  
  


* * *

  
“Consul Antony,” said Cicero, sounding very much like he wanted to spit the words on the stretch of floor between them.

“Friend Cicero,” said Antony, rather wishing he would, so he could force the man to eat them back up.

“Tell me, how long do you expect to reside in this house?” he asked.

“As long as it takes to find another fit to move into, I suppose.”

Cicero made a small sound. “It's only – the idea of two consuls living together has raised some eyebrows around Capitoline Hill. Most irregular. Atia of the Julii certainly has had some interesting commentary on the matter.”

Antony's grip on his wine cup tightened, though his expression did not change. “Since when is Atia one of your conversational partners?”

Cicero said airily, “Oh, hadn't you heard? I've decided to take up young Octavian's case – concerning his inheritance.”

“His _case._ What case?” Antony laughed. “We are supposed to trust a scrap of _writing_? I'm no lawyer, but Brutus says testamentary adoption has very little standing in the law.” He paused, considering. “I'd wish you luck, but honestly I'm looking forward to watching you get laughed out of court.”

He spoke too loudly; from across the room, Brutus narrowed his eyes. It seemed this line of conversation was not sufficiently in the spirit of reconciliation.

“Not as much as I am looking forward to watching you fall on your face this year,” replied Cicero. “Don't think we won't be watching and keeping a list. The second you leave office, we'll have you up on more charges than any one man could hope to answer in a lifetime.”

The man was admittedly by far the better at this game; he spoke the words with the tone and expression of one commenting on the tapenade.

“I hope you enjoy the dinner,” Antony said and bared his teeth in a smile.

  
  


(While Servilia was planning the night, Antony had stepped in only to offer advice on the most critical details.

“I cannot be seated next to Dolabella. That man felt entitled to a consulship from Caesar – his petulance will put me off my food.”

“I will not place him next to my son without a buffer,” said Servilia, implacable. “He arouses the worst of his self doubts. And Dolabella's rank makes it impossible to sequester him further along the table.” They were to eat at a long table, like soldiers on a war campaign.

“Why not put him next to Cicero?” suggested Antony. It took all his willpower to control his tone while making the proposal. “After all, a man cannot doubt the respect he is credited whilst sitting next to one such as Cicero.”)

  
  


“—you were saying?” said Antony, turning away from the happy sight of Cicero sitting pale and tight-lipped next to Dolabella, who hadn't stopped droning on for, by his estimation, going on twenty minutes.

“The lions,” said Cassius, in the tone of one who had said it more than a few times already.

“The lions, yes.” He nodded and popped an olive in his mouth. “Of course.”

Cassius persevered. “They were actually mine to begin with. I was the one who procured them, you see, and Caesar just swooped in and took them for himself—”

He blinked. “Wait. Are we talking about those beasts who tore up Megara a couple years back? _Those_ lions?”

The proconsul looked agonized. “I left them there for a only few months – there was a civil war on, it was no time to be bringing lions into Rome.”

“Caesar did,” said Antony. “He used them in his next triumph. Crowd went wild for them. Great show.”

Cassius said through gritted teeth, “Yes, I remember – but they were my lions _first_ , you see.”

Antony rested his chin in his hand and scrutinized the man. “Cassius, did you want Caesar dead because he nicked your lions?”

“Friends, friends,” called Brutus from the other end of the table. He sounded quite desperately gay; to his left, Dolabella was still speaking in an undertone. If Antony were even a little bit of a good man, he would feel guilty throwing his friend and co-consul in the path of such a creature. “I would like to propose a toast – to the Republic, and our renewed commitments to civil peace and prosperity.”

All around the table, men who would decline to piss on one another if they were on fire raised their cups in a solemn agreement to lie through their teeth. “Peace,” they murmured.

“Yes, I truly hope we can put all the bloodshed behind us,” said Cicero, lunging for the small opening of conversation. His eyes darted to Dolabella and away again. “It's no way to run a country, is it. Always looking over one's shoulder, wondering where the next attack will come from. Why, I remember when _I_ was the focus of an assassination plot—”

“No one tried to assassinate you,” said Antony loudly from the opposite end of the table. He'd had rather a great deal of wine by then, and was experiencing the familiar rising joy that always came over him before a good fight or fuck.

Cicero leaned forward so he could speak at him past the long line of other dinner guests. “Only because I headed it off. But I assure you there was a plot.”

“There was no plot,” said Antony aside to his table companions, though of course he could not help it if his voice carried further afield. “Man was consul for barely a couple months before he started divining ways to sentence decent patrician men to death.” _But thank goodness we've abolished the Dictatorship,_ he managed not to add, but only because Brutus would be unbearable afterwards.

“Even your former patron would not go so far as say your step-father was a decent man, Antony,” said Cicero.

“Oh, please,” said Quintus Ligarius suddenly from the middle of the table. “Let's not re-litigate the Catiline business again.”

More murmurs of agreement, and this time the group's sincerity could not be in doubt. Antony and Cicero begrudgingly sat back in their seats.

“Brutus,” said Cassius, trying to capture the slumping consul's attention from the other end of the table. “Brutus, do you remember how I told you about those lions?”

Brutus looked up and his eyes fought through his obvious dejection to focus on his fellow liberator in the distance past the candelabra. “Lions?”

“Didn't Caesar have lions in his last triumph?” said Lepidus on Antony's other side, looking around for affirmation. “That was a jolly good show.”  
  


* * *

  
A week after the dinner of reconciliation, the city awakened to find the rostra in the forum covered with new writings: _we are all Caesar's heirs_ and _where are our seventy-five drachmas?_

“That's a highly specific number,” said Antony, reclining on a tribune's bench as Brutus paced the length of the senate house. “Given that we forbade public reading of his will, wherever do you think they got it?”

“You know where they got it,” said Brutus. “I don't think Octavian is going to give up. You know he has assumed Caesar's name? We should negotiate before he turns the people to his side.”

“I'm not negotiating with a boy whose sole merit is his issue,” said Antony, and would not be moved on the subject.  
  


* * *

  
Antony went to inspect a house on the marginally respectable edge of the Saburra, and he press-ganged Brutus into coming along.

“Strictly speaking, this is not consular business,” Brutus pointed out. His words echoed slightly in the empty hall. He looked around with great suspicion, as if a barefoot child might materialize at any moment and ask him for coin.

Antony replied, “Strictly speaking, our consulship is going to go very badly if people keep whispering that your co-consul is slipping into your bed every night.”

He glanced over to see if Brutus had gone red; he had. Too easy. The only upside to half the city calling him a catamite behind his back and occasionally to his face was that it at least flustered Brutus, or so Antony said to Eros. _That's because you have no shame, Dominus,_ said the slave, but Antony thought he meant it fondly.

“I meant,” said Brutus haughtily, “that I don't understand why I had to accompany you on this errand.”

“What do I know of houses?” said Antony. “I've spent half my life sleeping in campaign tents.” He looked around with a critical eye, trying to envision the stark rooms full of life and laughter, or at the very least, furniture. How many chairs did a man need? “What do you think? Does it have good – lines, or whatever?”

“Not as good as mine,” said Brutus.

They wandered out of the main atrium. The ceiling was lower in the triclinium, for some reason. They spent a few seconds ducking their heads between the two rooms to compare them. Brutus shrugged at him. They moved on.

“Why don't you just move into Pompey's villa?” he asked as they went down the slender colonnaded corridor to the bedrooms.

“I think the fact that we're all still calling it Pompey's has something to do with it.”

“Be serious.”

“Didn't like the neighborhood,” said Antony, still evasive.

“No, of course, what's to like? How could it possibly compare with rubbing shoulders with the brothel owners and thugs of this fine street?” Brutus paused and his expression turned speculative. “They say your parties would sometimes go on for five days at a time in that villa.”

“I was a younger man then.” Three years younger, to be precise.

“How badly did you trash it?” For some reason, Brutus asked this in a near whisper. Like all true mama's boys, he held a secret fascination for the type of misbehavior he would never personally be party to, and took his secondhand thrills where he could.

“The outer walls are still standing,” admitted Antony. “But as for the inside... let's just say I'll be very motivated to prevent our dear friend Quintus from regaining possession of the property.” Antony's debts would double, easily.

The master bedroom looked much like the rest of the house. Floor, ceiling, four walls. He had no idea what he was supposed to be looking for. The massive empty space that presumably would need to be filled with a bed and linens at some point weighed his mood down. Eros would technically be the one to go out and procure all the necessary things, but still – it all made him feel very weary.

Behind him, Brutus actually sniffed. “My bedroom's larger. And it has a second window.”

A second window only meant a second way for assassins to slip in.

He turned around to say: “As we have established, it's not your bedroom I am throwing over,” except he didn't get past the first four words because a massive lion was ambling shaggily past the open doorway behind Brutus.

Whatever expression Antony's face took on, it caused Brutus to spin and stare at the now empty space. “What's the matter?” he said, and then looked deeply offended as Antony frantically shushed him.

He crept silently over to the doorway, motioning Brutus to do likewise. He held his breath and edged an eye out into the hallway.

The lion was as tall as Antony's shoulders and thickly maned. At the end of the hall, it bent and stretched out its front paws: claws rippled out against the house tile with audible clicking. Its tail swished through the air with lazy menace.

When he turned back into the room, Brutus was over on the far side, holding his elbows and staring intently at the floor. “Why is there a lion in your house?”

“It's not my house,” said Antony, and the words came out with unmistakable tone of _it's not my fault._

“Fine.” Brutus amended, “Why is there a lion in this house, the house we are currently inside?”

“I don't know, and I don't think it matters for the moment. We need to get out of here.” He looked at the windows.

“You know, this wouldn't be such an issue if you'd allowed our bodyguards to enter with us,” said Brutus. He sounded remarkably calm, all things considered.

Antony hadn't let the bodyguards enter because he didn't want them to know the layout of what might become his home. But he didn't want to admit this to Brutus, who would only call him paranoid.

He said, “Who's to say they weren't the ones who released the lion in here after us?”

“Now you're just being paranoid,” said Brutus.

“How is that paranoia?” he demanded in a fraught whisper, stepping close and bringing his hands up to show how desperately he wanted to shake the other man. “How do you think the blasted thing got in here? Do you, do you think this sort of thing happens every day? A man goes out looking for some decent market-rate housing and finds his competition is a _fucking_ _lion_ —”

Brutus stared at him with bright eyes, looking oddly fascinated. “You're panicking. I don't think I've ever seen you panic before.”

“You didn't see what those things did in Megara.” After Caesar had the lions successfully caged, Antony found a woman lying in the street hand in hand with her little one. There had been no body attached to the hand.

Feeling sick and unable to resist the compulsion, he went to go check on the lion again; it was now sitting in the middle of the atrium. Such a preposterously large, deadly animal didn't look like it belonged to the same realm as man, and yet there it was, in the very space one might offer light refreshments to guests. There was no way they were getting past it to the front gate.

He felt Brutus poke his head out behind him and furiously drove his elbow backward; the man gave a muffled yelp as it connected with his gut. They both froze. After a precious few seconds of no movement from the atrium, they silently retreated into the room again.

“We'll have to go out these windows, and find some way to get over the garden wall,” said Antony.

Brutus rubbed his belly, the very picture of wounded consular dignity. He looked at the door to the room for only a second before relenting. “Yes, fine. _Fine_. Let's go.”

Getting through the window wasn't an issue, but the wall around the garden was too high to jump or climb over unaided. There was a pear tree in one corner, but it was at least seven feet from the wall. It was going to be a tough leap.

Casting glances all the while over his shoulder at the silent house, Antony gestured at Brutus to start climbing.

“Antony, I cannot in good conscience let you buy this place,” said Brutus as they struggled up through the branches of the pear tree. “This garden? A disgrace. Look at the way this tree's been pruned, just butchered. Some people, they don't put enough attention towards their gardens, but if you're going to be a man of property, you need to not discount the sizable impact a good green space can have on your property values.”

Antony – pulse still pounding and eyes slitted against the bark debris kicked down into his face by his co-consul's ungainly scramble – found he had absolutely nothing to say. Urgency and terror had swallowed even his fury.

Brutus's long hem caught and tangled in the branches more than once. Antony thought somewhat numbly he would have to thank Eros for always dressing him like a Grecian concubine, when a low snarl from below snatched all thoughts clean from his head.

He had withstood without much trouble the bloody scrum of battle; forced marches through unspeakably inhospitable terrain; crowded galleys on fire in deep, open water – but he found it all was nothing to the sight of those teeth a mere ten feet below his feet.

The lion made its first attempt up the trunk of the tree.

“Juno's sweet cunt,” he said. “Jump, Brutus! Jump, you miserable bastard—”

The flailing figure flew through the air in a flutter of gray fabric. Antony barely waited to see that he caught himself before following suit; he landed hard atop the garden wall, his legs slamming painfully into the stone and scrambling for purchase a moment before he pulled himself all the way up and swung over the other side.

They landed in a dusty tangle on the street.

Antony coughed. Brutus groaned. Somewhere on the other side of the wall, the lion yowled.

It was a long minute before they could stand again; Antony couldn't tell which one of them was leaning on the other. Once he caught his breath, he could appreciate their good fortune at landing on an otherwise empty stretch of street. No one was staring at them yet.

“Someone – someone just tried to kill us,” said Brutus blankly. When Antony merely nodded, he came over all pale, like the implications were only just occurring to him. “We need to call the bodyguards and get back to the house. Wait – Antony? Where are you going?”

He had dropped his hand from the man's shoulder and taken a step away.

“Home is that way,” Brutus said, gesturing as if he actually doubted Antony knew.

“Later,” he said, shaking his head. “Go now, I'll meet you back there.”

But Brutus only continued to look at him incredulously. “You're mad. Someone just tried to murder us, you shouldn't be going anywhere without a full complement of guards.”

His snide, scolding tone was too much to bear, on top of everything else. It was nothing for Antony to crowd him against the wall until there was hardly breath to share between them.

He bit out, “I need a drink, and then I need to _fuck_ _someone_ , and then I think I'll likely need another drink. So unless you're offering...”

But his words died away as he became aware something was off. The brush with death had reconfigured the weight distribution of their normal give-and-take, and for once Brutus wasn't flushing or flinching – or doing anything, really, other than searching his face with a too-serious expression on his own.

He looked like he was actually considering making an offer. His lips parted.

Antony stepped swiftly back. Brutus held himself very still where he had put him against the wall. In his dirty, disheveled daze, he looked like nothing but the skinny boy he'd been in Greece two decades previous.

“Go home, Brutus,” he said at last, and slipped blindly away into the Saburra, where he could sink with relief into the other wretches, debtors, and drunks who populated the streets where Julius Caesar as a boy had once walked.  
  


* * *

  
Two days later, a new piece of graffiti made appearances here and there through certain neighborhoods in the city: a great, golden lion standing astride the fallen bodies of Rome's consuls. Emblazoned over the lion's fierce visage was the name _Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus._

So went the first month of the consulship of Antony and Brutus.

**Author's Note:**

> Cassius's grudge against Caesar over the lions was totally a thing, at least according to Plutarch (and why should we doubt lovely Plutarch?)


End file.
